Sunday, July 13, 2008

The School Year of Death Rolls On

I'm going to try to get a few updates online in the form of previews over the coming weeks, and as things stand it appears that I should be full steam ahead with about a week to spare before the football season begins. All that notwithstanding, this past year has been an absolute slog through the rigors of academia. We'll turn this ship around in August. Continue to read as surprises may arrive in this space, but if you check back once a week you'll probably be fine.

7 comments:

Hang in there buddy. At least you can watch the Badgers on TV...oh wait, you can't. Time Warner still has an iron-fist mentality on not letting Badger fans see the big ten network. Thinking of switching to a new cable provider? Hmmm, I wonder why? Wisconsin’s Time Warner cable costs too much maybe? Switch. They don’t have the big ten network. Switch. They don’t care about UW-Madison sports fans who keep hearing about coverage from fans in other states who do have the btn. Switch. Thousands of other fans around the country are watching the btn right now, but not us because apparently the Time Warner suits don’t think we deserve too. Switch. Direct TV, the DISH network and a bunch of others all include the btn on their systems, but not Time Warner. It's definitely time to make the switch and send them a message.

the coach is a dumbass. like when he called a timeout when the clock was ticking, 4th down and Michigan St. was needing a field goal with 12 secconds left. Michigan had no more timeouts and the fricken badger coach calls a time out for them to call a timeout and win the fricken game!!!!!!

“She’s Mother Theresa meets MacGyver” says Doug Broeska President of the CliniCard while visiting Sassoon Hospital in Pune, India. “She should probably at least be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine.”

That’s an impressive statement but also accurate when it comes to Dr. Aarti Kinikar, Head of Pediatrics at Sassoon Hospital in Pune, India (Pune is a city of nearly 10 million, just south of Mumbai, and Sassoon General Hospital is the biggest public hospital in the region). During the H1N1 Flu outbreak last year (2009-2010), Dr Kinikar was faced with a medical emergency seemingly out of all proportion to anyone’s ability to deal with it. Bodies were literally piling up outside of the hospital morgue and she feared that most of the young children and babies that were coming to Sassoon with severe breathing problems would be added to the growing pile. The hospital had only 4 working ventilators and was facing a steady flow of children to the pediatric ward that quickly swelled to a deluge of over 1200, all of whom were in severe respiratory crisis.

As the numbers of very sick children grew so did Dr. Kinikar’s resolve. There had to be way to create the bit of air flow needed to keep a child’s lungs breathing. “The best medication is sometimes oxygen, and even though the children had made it to the hospital, without it they might die right in front of you…that’s a helpless feeling for a doctor” said Kinikar. Motivated by equal parts of desperation and inspiration, Dr. Kinikar rigged a simple breathing tube device only with materials on hand. The PNC pressure device called a “nasal bubble CPAP device” (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) miraculously worked for 85% of the children who were treated. Although bubble CPAP has been around for decades, the device she rigged was much less elaborate than the expensive tubing and valve configurations that are commercially available by the same name. “I was taking a risk,” Kinikar said. “I didn’t know whether people would back me using a technique which didn’t seem to have much scientific push.” As a result of her willingness to step outside of convention, an estimated 500 childrens’ lives were saved at Sassoon Hospital because her fast thinking in a time of extreme crisis. A few dollars worth of plastic tubing had taken the place of much more expensive devices which weren’t available to the hospital at the height of the emergency anyway. http://www.ccsviclinic.ca/ . Continued in the next comment.. Full Article also available here.. http://ccsviclinic.ca/?p=793